Pop Smart - Speed Racer: The Grand Prix of put-downs

Reviewed here, the new Speed Racer film is so frenetic, freakily colored and aggressively fake, you’ll watch the first seven minutes convinced that someone has laced your popcorn with a powerful hallucinogen. There’s a silver lining to Speed Racer’s psychedelic vomit, however: the film has inspired our nation’s film critics to some of their most creative turns of phrase in years. Who will win the race to write the best, nastiest quip?

Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” got the week off to an impressive start:

“Put 80 pounds of fireworks into an industrial dryer, crawl right in there with them, turn it on and then light the fuse. It’ll give you a good idea of the visual onslaught you’ll be enduring.”

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott concedes:

Yes, the colors are hot, the set design is cool, and the sidekick chimpanzee is cute, but the action sequences — the hyperreal video-game kineticism on which the Wachowskis’ reputation for virtuosity has rested — are chaotic and nonsensical. The sleek computer-animated racecars flip, jump and slide from side to side, but few of their feats elicit anything like the amazement or surprise of, say, watching moderately skilled teenage skateboarders in a parking lot.

MSNBC’s Alonso Duralde suggests:

“Imagine someone pouring hot, melted Starburst candies into your corneas, and you just begin to approximate the experience of Speed Racer...”